The Difference Between Mandatory Training and CPD

What Is CPD?

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) refers to learning activities supporting your health professional growth. These activities help you maintain, develop, or improve your knowledge, skills, and practice throughout your career.

Each National Board sets specific CPD requirements to maintain registration. These standards are part of the National Law and include a set number of hours per year that must be relevant to your context of practice and learning needs.

What Is Mandatory Training?

Mandatory training is organisation-led. It refers to compulsory training that your employer requires for you to safely and legally carry out your role.

Examples include:

• Fire safety and evacuation
• Infection prevention
• Manual handling
• Incident reporting systems
• Bullying and harassment training
• System and policy inductions
  

Mandatory training aims to support workplace compliance, safety, and quality care, not professional registration.

Learn more: Guide to Mandatory Training on the Ausmed Toolbox.

Can Mandatory Training Count Toward CPD?

It depends. Mandatory training can count toward your CPD only if:

• It meets an identified learning need.
• It contains new learning.
• It is relevant to your context of practice.
• You document and reflect on the learning.

For example:
If you’re completing fire safety training for the fourth time with no changes and have no current learning need related to fire safety, it likely won’t count.

If the training has been updated, aligns with your practice setting, and helps close a gap, you may be able to document it as CPD.

Common Misconceptions

“I can document all my mandatory training modules as CPD.”

Not necessarily. Repeated mandatory training that doesn’t lead to new learning is unlikely to meet the NMBA CPD standard.

“Completing mandatory training proves I’m competent.”
Not always. Completion ≠ competence.

As Donna Wright says:
“Education may be a vehicle to help you get where you need to be, but it is not the end goal.”

Summary: CPD vs. Mandatory Training

Feature	CPD	Mandatory Training
Required by	Ahpra/National Board	Employer
Purpose	Ongoing professional development	Workplace compliance and safety
Counted toward CPD?	Yes (if relevant and reflected upon)	Only if new learning occurs and meets an identified learning need.
Set by	Legislation and regulation	Organisational policy
Audit requirement	Required for registration	Required for employment
Relevance	Individualised to your practice	Standardised to workplace role

What Happens If You Don’t Complete Mandatory Training?

Failure to complete mandatory training may:

• Result in being removed from specific duties
• Affect rostering and workload allocation
• Breach workplace policy and safety protocols

Can CPD and Mandatory Training Work Together?

Mandatory training can be part of your CPD if:

• New learning is included.
• It meets an identified learning need.
• You can document and reflect on the training, its relevance to your context of practice and how it positively improves professional practice.

Mandatory training is a compliance tool. CPD is about professional growth.

Need to manage both CPD and mandatory training?

You can track both mandatory training and professional development in Ausmed’s CPD App, keeping your compliance and professional development aligned in one place.

With Ausmed, you can track both in one place.

• Document and reflect on CPD.
• Do annual mandatory training.
• Stay audit-ready.

Start today at ausmed.com.au